Archive for the ‘Massacres’ Category

Police and federal law enforcement agencies were in the midst of an all-out manhunt this morning for the gunman they say is responsible for killing nine people in a Charleston, South Carolina, church Wednesday night in what officials described as a hate crime.

The suspect opened fire on a bible study group at the historic predominantly black Emanuel AME Church on Calhoun Street, killing eight people in an “unfathomable” act of violence. One other person was rushed to the hospital and died. Police originally said two people were hospitalized.

Police said the alleged gunman, whom the mayor called a “horrible scoundrel,” was inside the church attending the prayer meeting with worshipers for almost an hour.

(CNN)Several people were killed in a shooting at an historic African-American church in Charleston, South Carolina, a source close to the investigation told CNN. The shooter is still at large. The shooting took place Wednesday evening at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, the oldest AME church in the South. Police haven’t said how many people have been shot. But the source who spoke to CNN said several bodies were in the church that were yet to be identified. “It’s really bad. It’s a very bad scene,” local pastor Thomas Dixon said. “Apparently the person just entered the church and opened fire. That part has not been fully articulated on what happened yet … they are still looking for the suspect.”

When people think of the Allied bombing of Germany, “Dresden” automatically springs to mind, surely not Wesel, Nürnberg or Würzburg or the hundreds of other obliterated German towns and cities. While people uselessly debate the death toll at Dresden, attention is diverted from the 45,000 to 50,000 civilians murdered in the bombing of Hamburg, the 10,000 people intentionally burned alive in Kassel, the fact that 20% of Nordhausen’s civilian population was killed in a mere fifteen minute attack or that one out of three Pforzheimers was murdered and thousands more hideously injured from an unnecessary bombing based on nothing more that a rumor.

We were led to believe that a campaign which dropped environmentally catastrophic bombs with the force of major earthquakes, bombs which actually changed weather patterns, endangered whole species of birds and insects and altered the shape of the map were all within the normal range of warfare and implemented for the “greater good” and carried out only in cases of sheer necessity to “shorten the war.” We accepted the faulty premise that the carefully planned incineration of thousands of innocent women and children was justified. We accepted the preposterous notion that there was only one villain in this conflict, one supreme face of evil which absolved all others of any wrongdoing.